Somewhere in the history of startup culture, revenue got rebranded as a vanity metric. What mattered, the new logic went, was users, engagement, time-on-site, monthly active accounts — leading indicators of future monetization that would eventually, inevitably, convert into money once the network effect kicked in or the ad model matured or the enterprise tier launched. This framing suited investors with long time horizons and diversified portfolios who could afford to wait for the ones that worked. It was catastrophic advice for anyone building without a safety net.